Bagram/Gitmo – What’s The Difference Again?

Detainees being held at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan cannot use US courts to challenge their detention, the US says.

The Justice Department ruled that some 600 so-called enemy combatants at Bagram have no constitutional rights.

Most have been arrested in Afghanistan on suspicion of waging a terrorist war against the US.

The move has disappointed human rights lawyers who had hoped the Obama administration would take a different line to that of George W Bush.

Prof Barbara Olshansky, the lead counsel in a legal challenge on behalf of four Bagram detainees, told the BBC the justice department’s decision not to reform the rules was both surprising and “enormously disappointing”.

Uh, just for clarification, that’s Eric Holder’s Justice Department making the ruling. The Eric Holder who works for Barack Obama.

So the big one-two this week is the declared Obama human rights policy (the US won’t let human rights get in the way of economics, the enviroment or security concerns) and detainees held by the US in Bagram (but not Gitmo).

Heh … old boss/new boss. At least Glenn Greenwald will have something to write about for a while, won’t he?

Wow, this governing is much harder than just flapping your gums about stuff, isn’t it?

“Gitmo”, thanks to the left and their mouthpieces in MiniTru, has become a byword around the world, a symbol of torture, cruelty, and injustice . Bagram is (thus far) unknown to people who don’t pay fairly close attention to the Iraq war. At most, people think of it as merely an air base. We could be tossing innocent goatherders into woodchippers there and nobody would know.

I hope that TAO is being cynical and realized that the only real problem with Bush putting prisoners in Gitmo is… well… that Bush was doing it. Those of us who live in reality know quite well that Gitmo was the best solution to a tough problem that could have been devised, but the left, consumed with hatred and lust for power, made it a campaign issue, and to hell with US national security concerns.

Now, TAO has to deal, not with the fairytales of the wicked George Bush and the cruel concentration camp called Gitmo, but with the very real problem of what to do with terrorist suspects captured overseas. He’s trying to have it both ways: by closing Gitmo, he scores a PR victory and mends a bridge with the rest of the lefty world, but he still has Bagram to imprison terrorists.

It was my understanding that the Supreme Court had stepped in last summer to close Gitmo’s prison because of Habeus Corpus concerns, not because of a Senator’s views. These two detention areas are like apples and oranges, because of us possessing Gitmo so long. It is considered America- Bagram is not.

There is some sort of law that has something to do with actual US personel on the ground in an area for so long, that habeus corpus is instituted as if it was US soil. At least thiswas the Supreme Court’s contention.

Sort of hard to establish on the back end of a 99 year lease. It’s never been the US’s property or a part of the US.

Habeus isn’t a right, ask Lincoln.

The court ruled that the detainees had to be given habeus if in US custody. The suit was brought by a detainee lawyer. The Bagram suit is also brought by a detainee lawyer. In the case of Gitmo the Bush DoJ said detainees shouldn’t be given the same privileges as a US citizen. The court disagreed. In the case of Bagram, the Obama DoJ said detainees should’t be given the same privileges as a US citizen. If the court is consistent, it will disagree. If it does, mondo problem for the Obama DoJ.

The point, of course, was how the Obama DoJ came to the very same conclusion as the Bush DoJ in very similar cases. However, Gitmo was a political issue fueled mostly by ignorance. Bagram has not been one (until now). What the Obama administration has discovered is extending these privileges isn’t as easy as it seems when out on the campaign trail. If they were, Gitmo would be closed as promised, wouldn’t it? Imagine facing the same problem in Bagram.

SCOTUS is playing fast and loose with this as it is. It ruled against the Bush DoJ earlier and laid out exactly what had to be done with the detainees at Gitmo. Congress passed laws which met those requirements to the “T” and the process was underway at Gitmo. Then SCOTUS reversed itself, declared its own procedures weren’t adequate and ruled as we have it presently. Not SCOTUS’s finest hour. But also, a rather interesting reality check for the Obama administration.

Are they playing for attention or what? Do they just have a bug for the executive branch?
Personally, i just thought Obama was playing the coattails of the Supreme Court, and now they are kind of sticking it to him.